Stay-at-Home Ponderings

I wrote these thoughts out the day the Michigan governor announced the stay-at-home order. Now 97% of Americans are under a stay-at-home protocol. While we're beginning to adjust to a new normal, we're also still reeling in many ways and grappling with our new reality.

Personally, I don't really know exactly what to think of it all (especially the swirling politics). What I do know is that this is a time for love, kindness, trust, and generosity. It's a time for prayer (if you're a person of faith) and grieving with the suffering, for creativity and patience. I'm seeking to lean into those things, and so are most of the people that I know personally. And if we lean toward kindness together--if we lean towards each other--this can be a time of hope and renewal for our planet.

Bloodroot in Maybury State Park, Spring 2020 (a solitary quarantine walk) 

Exposed

3/23/2020

We feel these days deeply and painfully.

As though we are relearning something about ourselves and our existence:

life is fragile.

We are fragile.

This time, it’s not 4 airplanes and 3 crash scenes that remind us

suddenly 

on a Tuesday morning

that we are fragile.

It’s not the news of the impending tsunami making landfall and claiming 230,000 lives.

It’s not an individual tragedy--a phone call with a diagnosis, discovery of an accidental overdose, a family disruption, a job loss--that we experience in isolation from those around us.

This.

This has come to all of us.

It is, at once, a sudden and a creeping thing.

It rose rapidly but lingers with uncertainty. 

We cannot wrap our minds around it, because it is always shifting, changing, evolving.

The narrative keeps unfolding.

This is a virus.

And it’s established a monopoly on our TVs, radios, internet sources, social media feeds, and even our private conversations.

It’s become a household name. A global terror.

A pandemic.

And we are exposed.

Exposed to change.

Exposed to harm.

Exposed, yes, to a virus,

but, oh, so much more.

We are exposed

to our mortality,

to the vulnerability of our lives that, God knows, we tried so hard to make safe, secure, and comfortable.

We are exposed

to raw emotions (our own and others’),

to needs we cannot fathom,

to suffering we cannot alleviate,

to information we cannot make sense of,

to disruption we cannot evade.

We are exposed to our fragility.

This violent virus, microbial menace.

Today, the governor announced a stay-at-home protocol for the state of Michigan.

Some feel this as governmental overstepping; others, as too little, too late.

The diverse perspectives reiterate our tensions, our loss of control, the invasiveness of the whole situation.

We each respond in a different way. But we all respond, think, feel, something. After all, our lives are being invaded. 

No one is immune

to this fragility,

our humanity.

We are reminded again.

By a microscopic organism.

Reminded that our precious lives are uncertain.

Reminded that we are fragile.

Reminded that we are human.

It is a good reminder:

we are all human.

Dear humans, let us love well.

Lent 2020

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

Each year for many of us, Lent begins with the pronouncement of these words and the smudging of an ashy cross on our foreheads. A sober reminder of our fragile humanity.

This year, however, the Lenten season has come to us with even deeper and more far-reaching impact, and regardless of faith tradition, we as human beings have faced our mortality and vulnerability with renewed awareness.

The traditional season of contemplation, fasting, and mourning has entered our lives in new, invasive, and uncomfortable ways in the form of a pandemic.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Brothers and sisters, members of the human family, we are dust. 

We are vulnerable, but love is strong.

Let us love well during these days.

Expectations and Trust

“...you will conceive and bear a son…

call his name Jesus.

He will be great

& will be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God

will give to him the throne of his father David,

& he will reign over the house of Jacob forever,

& of his kingdom there will be no end….

The child to be born will be called holy--the Son of God.” (Lk. 1)

This is what You told Mary to start with. This was how her story started. These were the expectations that You set. This happened before all the shame, before Joseph and the turmoil of the engagement being threatened, before the Roman politics and the tax census. This happened before Simeon’s terrifying and cryptic words, before the visit of the Magi, the horrifying actions of Herod, and the escape to Egypt. This happened before Mary's life was completely disrupted, turned upside-down, destroyed.

You sent an angel to a young woman with a message full of wonder and promise and presence. And she believed it.

And, God, from where we stand, it all went downhill from there. Why You do ‘dis?

Also from our perspective: things often go this way, and at the end of the path of an obedience that began with hope and light and certainty, we, like Mary, find ourselves standing at the foot of a cross, heartbroken. Looking up at the bloody, mangled remains of the gift that came to us with such promise and hope. What is this awfulness? No wonder we feel like fools when You ask us to hold onto faith and hope for a Resurrection. But where else can we go?

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me like you have said.”

So...please...heal our cynicism and skepticism. Our hard-heartedness.

God, we have hurt often and long and hard at how Your words and promises come true in real life. Apparently our expectations are usually wrong and Your purposes are inscrutable (You actually told us that ahead of time). We often feel like there’s a terrible bait-and-switch going on, and like we can’t take Your words at face value (but we’re afraid that we’re going to be punished if we don’t--cue the Zechariah story: “you’ll be mute because you didn’t believe my words that will be fulfilled in their time”). It’s hard for us to believe that You will end things in a way that is “better than we could ask or think,” since things regularly go worse than we expected/hoped (based, we thought, on things You had said). We feel our smallness and our inadequacy in understanding and interpreting the things You say to us.

The more this happens, the more suspicious we become of angels and angel visits and angel messages and anything else that seems too good to be true, too full of goodness and joy. Suspicious of You and Your trustworthiness.

I guess I don’t think You blame us, though. You actually understand. You know that faith is a tall order. That’s why You value it so much. You like to be trusted, because You know just how confusing and hard things can get from our side of the coin.

So help us to trust You. May the Spirit fill us again today and convince us that You do love us. Give us the willingness and ability to trust You. We actually do love You. You loved us, and You planted love for You in our hearts. No matter how much we struggle, we actually do love You and want You. So breathe life back into our faith today.

And when we are confused or hurt or afraid or cynical or angry, come down and be near to us: be our Jesus who saves his people from their sins and is our God with us.

“We will trust in You.”

^^^This miracle brought to us by the Spirit of the Holy One who overshadows us and places life within us. Just like he did in Mary.

*written 11/8/18

Image by Free Photos from Pixabay

Lament

Teach us to lament with You,

O God.

We feel Your grief; it rises strong

in us.

The hurt that fills Your heart

now floods

our own and makes us know

that You—

Ancient and Wise beyond our grasp—

still feel

the brokenness and pain that seem

always 

to come, to cut, to curse, to cure.

And yet,

You have not made Yourself

exempt

from all the harm of humanness.

You came,

and as a Man, You shared our lot.

You bore 

the bitter days of darkness, worlds

of grief;

absorbed into Your heart 

the ache

of all that evil’s rage has marred

in us.

Your life and death continue on:

the Church

reflects You, Three-in-One.

We share

with You in life and death, relationships and harm

and grief,

and, weeping, raise our own

lament.